[chef] Re: accessing environment attributes in cookbooks

[Mike < >]

Hi Steven,

You've placed your debugging code in the attributes/default.rb file,
this gets evaluated at compile time.

Have you tried placing the same debugging code in the
recipes/default.rb (or somewhere like that) where the debugging
statement will show what the value of an attribute is at the execution
phase?

-Mike

On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 2:11 AM, Steven Lehrburger 
<
 >
 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to Chef and am trying to migrate my existing infrastructure. Sorry
> if this is explained in the docs or elsewhere, but I've not been able to
> find it.
>
> I have two Chef environments, dev and prod, and want to specify file paths
> in a cookbook that have a different parent directory based on the
> environment. When I try to access the environment attribute in my cookbook,
> however, all I get is 'nil'.
>
> For example, in my "dev" environment's JSON file, I have
>
> ...
> "default_attributes": {
>   "my_attr": "/my/path"
> },
> ...
>
>
> And I can verify my_attr is defined in
> https://manage.opscode.com/environments/dev. If I do a `knife node show
> dev_all` it shows the proper environment, role, run list, and recipe. In
> that recipe's attributes/default.rb, I have:
>
> Chef::Log.info('---------------')
> Chef::Log.info(node.chef_environment)
> Chef::Log.info(node[:my_attr])
> Chef::Log.info(Chef::Environment.load(node.chef_environment).default_attributes['my_attr'])
> Chef::Log.info('---------------')
>
>
> When I run a vagrant provision, it prints:
>
> $  rvmsudo vagrant provision
> [default] Running provisioner: Vagrant::Provisioners::ChefClient...
> [default] Creating folder to hold client key...
> [default] Uploading chef client validation key...
> [default] Generating chef JSON and uploading...
> [default] Running chef-client...
> stdin: is not a tty
> [2012-12-26T06:52:26+00:00] INFO: *** Chef 10.16.2 ***
> [2012-12-26T06:52:27+00:00] INFO: Run List is [role[web]]
> [2012-12-26T06:52:27+00:00] INFO: Run List expands to [vine_web]
> [2012-12-26T06:52:28+00:00] INFO: Starting Chef Run for dev_all
> [2012-12-26T06:52:28+00:00] INFO: Running start handlers
> [2012-12-26T06:52:28+00:00] INFO: Start handlers complete.
> [2012-12-26T06:52:29+00:00] INFO: Loading cookbooks [build-essential, nginx,
> ohai, vine_web]
> [2012-12-26T06:52:29+00:00] INFO: ---------------
> [2012-12-26T06:52:29+00:00] INFO: dev
> [2012-12-26T06:52:29+00:00] INFO: nil
> [2012-12-26T06:52:29+00:00] INFO: /my/path
> [2012-12-26T06:52:29+00:00] INFO: ---------------
> [2012-12-26T06:52:31+00:00] INFO: Chef Run complete in 3.026496384 seconds
> [2012-12-26T06:52:31+00:00] INFO: Running report handlers
> [2012-12-26T06:52:31+00:00] INFO: Report handlers complete
>
>
> I'm confused because my node defintiely has the right environment, and the
> environment definitely has the right attribute, but the attribute hasn't
> been assigned to the node by the time my cookbook runs.
>
> Is this the expected behavior, perhaps due to the order in which things
> happen? If no, what have I done wrong?
>
>
> Is my workaround the right thing to be doing? It took quite a bit of
> googling before I stumbled into the Chef docs and thought to try that. If
> yes, is there somewhere in the docs I can make a note of this?
>
>
> Thanks in advance, and happy holidays!
>
> /~s